Computer Tutorials for Beginners

An Excel Timetable Project  - In this Excel timetable project, we'll set ourselves some chores to do around the house. We'll plan an exact time to start a task, and how long it will take to finish. We'll be adding one time to another. So create the same spreadsheet as the one in the image below (you don't need to use the same colours): What we're going to do is enter a   Start Time   for our chores. This will be 9 in the morning. Then we'll estimate how long it takes to wash the pots, which we'll place in the   Time Job Takes   column. We'll add the "Time Job Takes" to the "Start Time" to get a new start time for the Hoover chore. But you'll see how it works as we go along. The first thing to do is to format the   Start Time   column: Highlight the Start Time column, from cell B3 to cell B8 From the Excel menu bar, click on Home Locate the Number panel: Click on the arrow (circled above) to bring up the  ...

A Budget Spreadsheet  - In the small town of Evercrease, the Council managed to collect half a million pounds from its citizens. Unfortunately, the Council spent all of this, and another 69 thousand besides. Naturally, the good people of Evercrease objected to being asked for another 69 thousand pounds. So they got rid of the council and appointed a new one. Have a look at last year's budget, and see if you can do better. Here's the budget where the previous council overspent by 69 thousand pounds: The final budget figure is in cell B33. It says minus £69 000. Your job is to construct the same budget as above, but making sure that you do not have a minus figure in cell B33. Otherwise, the people will fire you as well! The first thing to do is to create the budget exactly as you see it above. When you have exactly the same figures as in the image, you can then start to amend things. For example, do you really need all those ducks and swans? What happens to your budget ...

Predicting future values with Excel Charts  - Excel can help you make predictions about future values, or help you spot a linear trend. What we'll do in this section is set up something called a Trendline. We'll use an X, Y Scatter chart for this. We'll take a look at future income predictions based on what was earned in previous years. If you're a bit confused, don't worry: it will all become clear as we go along. Type the following headings into cells A1 to C1: Year   Years since 2006   Income Format the cells, if you prefer. Your spreadsheet will then look like this: Enter the years 2006 to 2019 into cells A2 to A15: As an X axis for our chart, we can have the years since 2006. These values will be used in a later formula. In Cells B2 to B15 enter the values 0 to 13: We now need some income values for the years 2006 to 2013. This is income that has actually been earned, rather than income that might be earned in the future. We'll then ...

Excel Formulas - Combining the Mathematical Operators - There are times when you will want to combine the arithmetic operators in your calculations. Here are a few examples of combining the operators: Example 1 Start a new spreadsheet Enter the number 25 in cell A1 Enter the number 50 in cell A2 Enter the number 2 in cell A3 In cell A5 enter the following formula =(A1 + A2) * A3 Press the Return key on your keyboard to get the answer The answer you should have got was 150. Notice the brackets in the formula. The brackets group part of your sum together. Without them, Excel will normally calculate from left to right. But it does some calculation before others. Excel sees multiplication as more important than adding up. To see what happens without the brackets, do this: Click on cell A5 Click inside the formula bar at the top Delete both the brackets from the formula Press the return key on your keyboard to see the answer Now the answer i...

A More Complex Excel Bar Chart - We gave ourselves some space in our spreadsheet for a reason. Where the pie chart used to be, we're going to arrange our TV data in a different order. Add the following data to your spreadsheet: That might be a bit small to see, but the numbers are just the viewing figures for ITV and BBC 1. The P1, P2, etc, means Position 1, Position 2, and so on. The highest viewing figure is under P1 and the lowest under P10 A quick way to copy all the numbers over, instead of having to type them out all over again, is to do this: Highlight the ITV numbers From the menu bar, click Edit From the drop down menu, select Copy Highlight P1 to P10 of the ITV Row From the menu bar, Click Edit again From the drop down menu, click Paste Special The following dialogue box pops up Put a tick in the box at the bottom, next to "Transpose" Click the OK button Your numbers will all be pasted over to the ...

Excel Bar Chart (continued) - When you have selected your Chart sub-type, click the Next button at the bottom, and you'll be taken to Step 2 of the Wizard. Your dialogue box will look like the one below: There's not much for us to do in step 2 of the wizard. But click the Rows radio button and see what happens. Set it back to Columns when you're done. The Data Range is the important part of Step 2. This refers to the data that you want in your spreadsheet. As we already highlighted the data we wanted in our chart, the Data Range text area is already filled out for us. But you can specify a different range here, if you wanted. But leave it alone for now, and just press the Next button. Your are taken to Step 3 of the wizard, and the dialogue box now looks like the following one: There a whole lot for us to do in Step 3 of the Wizard! But we're basically formatting the chart to how we want it. Notice the three text boxes: Chart Title, Category (X) Axis...

Getting Started with Windows 10  - When Windows 10 starts up, you should a screen similar to this one: The main areas of the start screen are these: So you have a Start menu, a Search box, a Notification area on the right, and a task bar in the middle where your running programs appear. Click the Start menu and you'll see something like this: Notice the icons in the bottom left: The Power icon is where you shut down your computer. Click the Power icon to see some options: You can shut down completely, restart your computer, or put it into power-saving mode, which is called Sleep.